


Lucky Number Seven

by echoist



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Slash, Science Assholes, The Drift (Pacific Rim), cloning, maybe more than pre-slash, side-effects of repressing The Drift, super secret science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-16
Updated: 2013-08-16
Packaged: 2017-12-23 16:00:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/928410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/echoist/pseuds/echoist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Newton?' Hermann called out, only to hear an answering 'Shhh!' issue from behind a moving curtain. He appeared to have cordoned off an area in the back corner of the lab with heavy screens, labeled 'Light-Sensitive Specimens – DO NOT TOUCH.' Newton poked his head around the corner with a slightly manic grin. </p><p>'Lock the door,' he advised before motioning Hermann enthusiastically over to a break in a thick curtain. Hermann frowned and paced across the room, wondering what could possibly be so important and so secretive that Newton would have to obfuscate its very existence. </p><p>Whatever it was, Hermann was certain he wasn't going to like it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lucky Number Seven

 

 

A light blinked incessantly at the terminal directly to Hermann's right. He ignored for as long as he thought he could reasonably get away with before finally hitting the button to bring up the message. It was, of course, from Newton.

'HERMANN,' it read, his name shouted in capital letters. 'Get over here, you're going to want to see this! I hope you want to see this. Ok, even if you don't want to see it, get over here anyway!'

Hermann sighed. He supposed he could take a break; he'd been plotting every point of data they had from the first opening of The Breach to the last, modeling it for detailed structural analysis as well as the changes in diameter when a larger Category of kaiju had come rampaging through. He twined his fingers together and cracked them, stretching his arms over his head. He couldn't remember the last time he'd glanced at the clock.

He grabbed his cane and made his way to the laboratory door, once again thankful that in the aftermath of Striker and Gipsy's success, the PPDC had seen fit to give the two scientists their own separate work space. There was still a great deal of work to be accomplished, once the press conferences and award ceremonies were finally over and done with. Hermann had little patience for such spectacle, but the dead had deserved to be honored as well as the living. Conditions in the Pentecost Memorial Shatterdome had remained much the same, and though the pace was less frenzied, the same could not be said for his colleague, Dr. Geiszler. Hermann was grateful the tabloid rags had never found him particularly interesting. They'd briefly been infatuated with the young biologist, and barely gave Mori and Becket any peace.

'Yes, yes,' he muttered, punching in a sequence of numbers and entering Newton's larger, refitted lab. It was filled with the newest, shiniest equipment anyone in his field could want, and the man had still seen fit to make his own modifications and 'improvements.' _If you could call them that_ , Hermann grumbled to himself while glancing around the room. Curiously, Dr. Geiszler was nowhere to be found.

'Newton?' he called out, only to receive an answering 'Shhh!' issue from behind a moving curtain. He appeared to have cordoned off an area in the back corner with heavy screens, labeled 'Light-Sensitive Specimens – DO NOT TOUCH.' Newton poked his head around the corner with a slightly manic grin.

'Lock the door,' he advised before motioning Hermann enthusiastically over to a break in a thick curtain. Hermann frowned and paced across the room, wondering what could possibly be so important and so secretive that Newton would have to obfuscate its very existence.

Whatever it was, Hermann was certain he wasn't going to like it.

He wasn't disappointed. Newton pulled back the curtain enough to let him squeeze past, and he ignored the slightly electric flash that always seemed to needle him whenever he brushed against the man's skin. Hermann had grown exceedingly capable of ignoring unpleasant things while they'd shared a miniscule laboratory in the eight months leading to the collapse of the Breach.

There, resting inside what appeared to be a large glass aquarium filled with wood shavings and small, sturdy toys, sat a nearly perfect, if miniaturized, copy of the infant kaiju that had emerged from Otachi's husk. It opened its mouth wide, stretching out a long, blue tongue and then chirped.

'She likes you!' Newton exclaimed, and Hermann took a step back, accidentally entangling himself with his colleague. By the time they'd righted themselves, the creature had shuffled forward on its lengthy forearms, pressing clawed feet against the glass.

'She?' Hermann hissed, attempting to keep his voice down as a check on his temper certainly wasn't looking good. 'You did this!' He accused, pointing a finger at Dr. Geiszler. 'You!'

'Well yeah,' Newton answered backing away from the long, skinny finger as it poked against his chest. 'Look at her! Isn't she amazing?'

Hermann backed farther away from the tank. 'No,' he answered gruffly. 'No, she is most certainly not amazing. Newton, what have you _done_?'

'Cloned a modified baby kaiju, what does it look like?' Newton answered, a bit affronted.

'You could lose your funding over this!' Hermann nearly shouted, only to watch Newton lower his hands repeatedly in a gesture for quiet. 'Don't you shush me!' Hermann responded. 'If this gets out, you'll lose your job – no one will hire you – they could shut the entire PPDC down!'

'Who's going to shut us down?' Newton argued. 'We're not operating under anyone's jurisdiction but the UN, and all they're going to care about is the research I've got over there on artificial tissue regeneration. With what I've learned from these guys, I'm way past what any medical institution or think tank in the world's got right now. I could grow you a spare heart in a week. Well,' he corrected. 'In your case, I could grow a functional heart for that deep black hole behind your lungs. Might do you some good,' he finished irritably.

'As much as you hate to be wrong, Dr. Geiszler, I can reliably inform you that I _do_ possess a heart. It pumps blood admirably through my system and does not need replacing. What _you've_ gone and done is past ridiculous, it's – it's dangerous, not to mention completely ill advised.'

'Meaning you didn't do it, and I didn't tell you about it until now,' Newton counted out on his fingers as if working at arithmetic. 'So you disapprove.'

'Of cloning a kaiju? Of COURSE I disapprove!' Hermann's hand squeezed the head of his cane so hard his entire right arm was shaking.

The creature in the pen made a curious sound, and then began to wail. It was a quiet sort of wail, Hermann supposed, but it was definitely registering distress. Newton knelt beside the tank and reached out before Hermann could intervene, stroking its head as though it were a small dog. 'Shhh,' he said, making soft cooing sounds as he moved his fingers slowly down its back. The miniature kaiju shook its head, but it did stop making that awful racket and – was it wagging its tail?

'Ok, let me revise my opinion,' Newton stated from on his knees. 'She _doesn't_ like you, and honestly, big surprise there. But she does like me,' he said lifting her up gently beneath her elbows and cradling her like a pet. Hermann came to the sudden terrifying realization that 'pet' might in fact be the most accurate descriptor for Newton's stupefyingly poor use of department resources.

'How many are there?' he hissed. 'Are you planning to sell them on the Black Market?' Newton approached him with the foul thing in his arms and Hermann tried to step back, only to find he had nowhere to go.

'One,' Newton answered. 'Just her,' he added, stroking a hand down the flexible ridge of scales along her back. Its back, Hermann corrected himself. That – that thing was most definitely an it. 'And no, what on earth would make you think I'm gonna sell her?' Hermann threw up one hand in utter disbelief.

'They imprint, you know?' Newton said softly, looking down at the creature in his arms. 'Otachi did, when I – when I drifted with the partial brain. I saw her, right as she hatched, and she saw me.' Hermann knew that, of course. He'd seen it in the drift with the partially formed clone, but he hadn't actually been fool enough to believe Newton's thoughts on the subject, then or now. 'She didn't eat me, dude,' Newton continued. 'She looked for me, and she found me, but -'

'But Gipsy Danger was right on her heels and registered as a higher threat,' Hermann interrupted.

'You weren't there, man,' Newton asserted. 'She could have ripped me in half, but she didn't. She _recognized_ me. That must have played havoc with her brain,' he added, shaking his head. 'And this little girl right here?' he said, playing with her toes. 'I think – well, I'm pretty sure she thinks I'm her mother.' The kaiju lifted up its head and bumped its nose on the underside of Newton's chin. He beamed.

'You have to get rid of it at once,' Hermann commanded, bringing the end of his cane down hard against the tiles.

'No!' Newton fired back. 'It took me seven tries to get this right, and I'm not giving up on her now just because you think she's inconvenient.'

'Seven tries?' Hermann echoed, glancing around in trepidation. Newton winced and tilted his head back toward a shelf filled with differently sized jars, each containing malformed versions of the creature suspended in amber fluid.

'Yep,' Newton nodded a bit solemnly. 'Meet Lucky Number Seven.' He took a step forward, and then another, and the kaiju sniffed the air around Hermann curiously. 'I know,' Newton said with obvious empathy. 'He smells like chalk and really old, wet wool, doesn't he?' Hermann harrumphed noisily, clearly offended. 'Here,' Newton continued. 'Just – just pat her on the head, or something. Maybe she'll learn to like you.'

'I am not touching that thing, Newton, and if you bring it any closer to my person I swear I will file an immediate complaint with Marshal Hansen -'

'Yeah, 'cause that's worked out so well for you before?' Newton couldn't resist a grin. 'C'mon, it won't kill you to be nice,' he cajoled, reaching out for Hermann's left hand and placing it gently on the creature's head. It was...warm, Hermann realized, and soft where its fontanelle hadn't yet closed. The two bony protrusions from its skull were much smaller than Otachi's, and the ridge plates along its spine were in fact as malleable as a shark's dorsal fin. Its tail branched off into three segments at the end, but they were a bit lumpy, instead of muscular and razor sharp. Even its claws were small where they pawed at his sleeve.

Newton let his hand linger over Hermann's as it traveled down the kaiju's body, watching a slow wonder work its way across his features into something resembling a fond smile. It was like watching a kid visit a petting zoo for the first time. Newton smiled right back, feeling a bit of blood rise in his cheeks at the sight. Hermann didn't smile nearly enough, in his opinion. It was a nice smile, if a bit stuffy around the edges.

Hermann suddenly coughed and drew back his hand as if bitten. 'All right,' he allowed. 'So this thing of yours isn't an immediate danger. But you can't hide it back here forever, Newton. What in the world do you think you're going to do with it when it grows up?'

'She,' Newton corrected. 'And don't worry about that, she probably won't get much bigger than a small dog. Say, corgi-sized, or so?'

'Probably,' Hermann echoed, then, 'a corgi? Really, Newton?'

Newton shrugged, and tickled the kaiju's belly. She let out a pleased, bubbling sort of sound that Hermann refused to believe had anything to do with laughter. It was probably just gas. 'I coded them to be small,' Newton explained. 'She's absolutely harmless. I had to leave some acid in the blood, or the entire system failed, but she doesn't have the glands to shoot anything corrosive from her mouth. Or spikes, or claws any worse than your average house pet.'

Hermann rubbed his fingers across his eyes. 'And what about its wings? Because I certainly remember the pair on Otachi that nearly destroyed our last Mark III.'

'I, eh,' Newt answered, looking guilty. 'I stunted her wing growth. She'll still have the membranes and some of the musculature, but I can't have her getting out and flying away somewhere, you know?' He looked down at the kaiju currently snuggling contentedly against his chest. 'I'm sorry,' he apologized. 'You should have been able to fly.' It didn't seem to care one way or another about his pronouncement, flicking its tail lazily back and forth in the air.

'And just what do you intend to do with it?' Hermann asked, getting to the heart of the issue.

'I – well, you know – I mean, I always wanted a dog when I was a kid.' Newton shrugged, and set Lucky Number Seven back down in her pen, watching her dig out a small hole in the wood chips and curl up into a ball.

'You made that thing just because you could,' Hermann accused. 'Without the slightest forethought for its future, or what consequences it could bring down on both your heads. Or mine, if anyone finds out I know about it.' He looked angry and disappointed all at the same time, and Newton suddenly felt eight years old, being told off for fighting back on the playground.

'Look, he said, crossing his arms across his chest defensively. 'It took me a long time to get this right, and I've learned an amazing amount in the process about kaiju biology and gene structure. It has applications across the board, from fighting epidemic level diseases, regenerating damaged cellular tissue, heck, even cloning extinct animals! God knows the world lost enough biodiversity over the last thirteen years. I'm doing something that can help!

'What do you do over there all day, huh?' Newton questioned pointedly. 'You look at old data, over and over again, expecting it to do something different than it did before. There's a name for that, you know,' he broke off, pointing a finger at Hermann's chest this time. 'Well I'm doing something _new,_ ' Newton finished, raising his arms up in an all too familiar gesture. The one he hauled out when he wanted someone, anyone to listen. This time, well, most times actually, it was Hermann.

'With what I've got in this lab alone, I could probably fix your hip,' Newton added, and his eyes immediately widened, his face curling in on itself in an expression with which Hermann was intimately acquainted. The expression he wore when he should have damn well kept his mouth shut.

'I do not. Require. Fixing!' Hermann lashed out, barely containing his anger in fear of drawing more attention to the lab.

'I know that, I do, I know – Hermann, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like -' Dr. Geiszler looked as if there were a convenient hole in the floor, he would gladly crawl into it.

'Yes,' Hermann answered, smacking Newton's ankle with his cane. 'You did.'

'Really though,' Newton continued, since the line had already been crossed. 'I could probably give you a few shots in your adductors and quadriceps, maybe the gastrocnemius too, just to lengthen them out a little bit. They'd be looser, you know, and maybe not cramp up so much?'

'I'm perfectly fine without adding any of your modified kaiju DNA into my system, thank you very much,' Hermann snapped.

'Dude, do you even know how DNA works?' Newton questioned, squinting his eyes at Hermann. 'Whatever, I'm moving out of here anyway,' he said with a slight shrug of his shoulders. 'I'll keep her at home, I'll continue working on my frankly brilliant medical breakthroughs, and no one will ever have to know she exists. It's not like I get many visitors,' he said, shooting Hermann a bitter, side-eyed glance.

'You're prepared to live like a hermit for the rest of that thing's natural life?' Hermann asked, his tone brimming with disbelief and his mind stuck somewhere around the words 'moving out.' 'You? Rock Star Biologist Newton Geiszler?' Newton mumbled something under his breath that didn't sound a bit complimentary. 'How do you even know what that thing's natural life span is, anyway? What if it outlives you?'

'Judging by the cell decay rates in the samples of living tissue I was able to preserve, I'd say she'll be with me for about ten to fifteen years. Maybe twenty, if the universe decides to play nice.' Newton looked down at the kaiju with pride and more than a little affection. 'I think we'll do all right as flat mates, even if she doesn't keep up with her half of the rent.' He chuckled at his own joke and she twitched her tail, sending a spray of splintered wood crashing across the enclosure.

'What are you going to do, litter box train her?' Hermann quipped, not expecting an answer.

'Actually, that's a really good idea!' Newton agreed, his face lighting up. 'She doesn't eat much – kaiju digestive systems were only designed to be temporary, since all they had to do was win a death match against a competitor and then they got shoved up through the Breach, half-starved and understandably angry. I fixed that, I'm pretty sure she could live off cat food, or even dog food, you know, for smaller breeds.'

'She's not a pet dog!' Herman exclaimed, gesturing at the tank with his cane.

'I'm aware of that, Hermann,' Newton replied angrily. 'You know, since I _designed_ her. And ha! – you called her 'she.'' Hermann rolled his eyes.

'How did you manage it?' he asked, taking a careful step around the aquarium to poke at Newton's equipment. 'I understand how you sequenced the DNA, you could do that before -'

'With the K-Sequencer,' Newt agreed. 'Which I also designed,' he added with a brief smirk.

'Yes, but what did you grow them from – or I suppose I should say, _in?_ ' Hermann asked, unable to keep the natural curiosity from his tone.

'I knew you'd be intrigued,' Newton said, flashing a smile. 'I grew the artificial womb first, and then I just worked my way back from the somatic tissue until I had a workable gamete -'

'Artificial – womb?' Hermann questioned, his diction terrifyingly precise.

'Yeah,' Newton answered. 'I mean, it's not like cloning a stock animal, I didn't have a female handy to just impregnate and wait around. God, that sounded dirty. Did that sound dirty?' He crooked his head in Hermann's direction, glasses tilting slightly down his nose. Hermann corrected them out of habit.

'It sounded absolutely filthy, just like approximately half of what leaves your mouth anyway,' he responded, stepping back. 'I'm not, er, that is – not even you - wouldn't just leave that sort of thing lying around, would you?'

Newton nearly bent double with laughter at the paralyzed expression on Hermann's face. 'Your face, Hermann -' he gasped out. 'Of course not, it's in cold storage.' He left off to draw in a deep breath and let it out again in a rush. 'You looked like you were afraid you were going to step in it!'

'Knowing the slipshod way you run your lab, I very well could have been!' Hermann exclaimed in a huff. 'You say it's in cold storage?' he inquired, his eyes narrowing. 'Won't that destroy its capacity for further experimentation?'

Newton nodded. 'I told you, I'm not – Seven's the last. I'm not making any more.'

'I'm certain that will be a great comfort to Failures No. 1 through 6,' Hermann snapped out cruelly in judgment.

Newt looked as if he'd been struck across the face. His eyes widened in surprise for a moment before he turned back to the shelf that contained the pitiful series of jars. 'Look, I -' he broke off, stroking down the glass that contained the largest specimen, cold and still with the preservation of death.

'Ok,' he admitted, his voice low and tight. 'You win, Hermann. Their deaths are all on me. It was a fault in my design, in my engineering, every single time something went wrong. But I really thought Number Six was going to make it, I did.' He rested his head against the cool surface of the glass and whispered something that sounded very much like an apology.

'It took me a month to figure out why her respiratory system collapsed,' Newt continued, a tremor in his voice. 'I told myself that was it, I was finished, I was going to scrub the whole project because I just couldn't take it anymore.' He turned back around, eyes rimmed with red, his hands spread out at his sides. 'I felt it right here,' he said, pointing to the side of his head. 'I didn't just watch them die, Hermann, I _felt_ it, all right? You may be perfectly happy in that chalk tower of yours over there, interpreting data spreads and balancing equations, where nothing ever needs saving or fixing -'

'Wait,' Hermann interrupted. 'Are you trying to tell me that you're connected to them, the way we were connected to the infant clone?'

'Oh, you mean that unique and frankly amazing experiment in neurobiology that we never, ever talk about?' Newt asked, throwing both hands in the air. 'You want to bring the Drift up _now?_ ' He paced back and forth before the shelf, muttering and popping his knuckles. 'Go ahead,' he offered. 'Let's talk about what it felt like to be in her head when she died, and while we're at it, why don't we have a nice sit down, make some tea. We could, you know, talk about what it was like to BE IN EACH OTHER'S HEADS!' Newton was shouting by the end of his monologue, and Hermann glanced over his shoulder once again, convinced that sooner or later someone was going to pop by to see what was wrong.

'You have an eidetic fucking memory, Hermann,' Newt said fiercely, leveling one hand in his direction. 'I know you can remember every single thing you saw and felt in there, like it was yesterday. You can't lie to me about that.'

Hermann visibly deflated in the face of his colleague's wrath. 'I do remember it. All of it,' he admitted quietly. What he'd seen even in this universe had been incredible, had been soul-shaking, and it had left him reeling for days. The entire Shatterdome had gone on a three-day bender, but he'd just shut himself away in the lab and worked, worked, worked. What Newton's memories and thoughts suggested – it would have only been messy, not to mention dangerous. Possibly both at the same time. It certainly would have ended badly. 'Just so you know,' Hermann mumbled. 'It does feel like yesterday.'

'Yeah?' Newton questioned. 'Well it does to me, too. Even after a full year, four months, and six days, it's like – like you were just in here,' he gestured wildly toward his head. 'Scrounging around through my thoughts, poking at my memories with your cane like it was sand at some goddamn beach.'

'Am I to suppose you skipped past my thoughts entirely and focused on communing with the kaiju?' Hermann asked, staring at the floor for several long moments. 'Doesn't sound too far off track for you, really.'

'You know I didn't,' Newt answered, his tone carefully neutral, which should have been terrifying. In their entire acquaintance, Newton had never once managed neutrality concerning a single thing.

'You've been - keeping track?' Hermann asked with an odd expression, stuck somewhere between disbelief and disregard. 'Of the time, since -?'

'Yes, I've been keeping track,' Newton replied, somewhat exasperated. 'Most humans keep track of time, Hermann. It's why our ancestors invented the sundial.' Hermann snorted and Newton answered with a look of disaffected scorn. 'In this case, however, all of my samples are dated. All those scavenged parts I'm not supposed to have? They were signed off by Chau's crew, so it's not really that difficult. It's not like I _tried_ , or anything,' he muttered. Newt leaned against the wall, staring down the row of failed kaiju births, his mouth twisting in on itself. Neither of them spoke, and the silence became deafening.

'You want to know why I kept doing this, Hermann?' he asked without looking to see if the other man cared. 'Because I owed it to _her_.'

'Her?' Hermann echoed quietly without understanding.

'Gipsy didn't just kill Otachi, ok, it killed her child! And then we stuck a giant needle into its brain and stole the information we needed to send a nuclear bomb to her home address.' He took off his glasses and wiped them down on his shirt tail, which was wet with some sort of blue fluid that generally made everything worse. Hermann held out a handkerchief without a word, and Newton took it, wiping the lenses clean. He stuck it into his back pocket and Hermann almost, but didn't protest.

'Lucky Number Seven,' Hermann said, leaning over the edge of the aquarium at the sleeping kaiju. 'She was your way of keeping Otachi alive.'

'She's an apology.' Newton bit off the final word as if it tasted foul on his tongue. 'That's why I'm done. I'm not making a small army of these guys or anything, ok? I'm not selling them, I'm not going to dissect them, and as soon as I can find a place, I'm going to bury the others.' He turned around, pulling two wide cabinet doors closed over the shelf, leaning into the wood with his shoulders slumped.

'But Seven's mine, all right? I'm going to keep her,' Newton said, wiping at his face and turning around. 'I'm going to give her a good life, and if you have a problem with that, if you still need to be Head Boy that badly, then you can go run and tell Marshal what I've been up to. I guarantee you we'll be out of the country before anyone even knows we're gone. Und wissen Sie, was sonst, Hermann -'

'How are you planning to get her out of here?' Hermann asked, stopping Newton's diatribe before it could become truly vulgar. Newton's face shifted into an expression of puzzled thought, and Hermann breathed a sigh of relief. Newton's experiments, all seven of them, explained quite a lot about the past year. About the nightmares, about the sudden and utterly irrational fear of death that he'd never before carried about like a weight on his back, even during the War. The infant Otachi was still with him too, Hermann supposed. It made him shiver, made him want to crawl out of his skin, but there it was. The kaiju hive-mind, only a brush away in the dark – and Newton, as well.

If he'd avoided thinking about that part for the last year, four months and six days, well then Hermann supposed it could wait a little longer. Newt's eyes narrowed, as if he somehow knew precisely what was going through Hermann's mind. He brushed the impulse away; their Drift had proved uncommonly strong, but as he predicted, it had weakened over time. Hadn't it?

It itched beneath his skin, a physical need to remind Newton that without Otachi's presence, they might still have seven more pilots alive and well, not to mention the swath of death and destruction she'd left in her wake across the city proper. Hermann kept quiet for the moment, staring down at the tiles, and occasionally, Number Seven, burrowing deeper into her nest. Now just wasn't the time.

'I know,' Newton said quietly. 'I know just how much she took away from us, from everyone. I doubt you could find a person on either side of this ocean that didn't grieve for someone, for a lot of someones. But I didn't look every kaiju in the eye, all right? I never really felt what they did until I knew her and she knew me, and as horrible as it might sound to someone like you, I've never been able to shake that.'

 _She was also a monster from an alien realm bent on utter annihilation_ , Hermann thought. 'Someone like me?' he asked aloud instead. Newton pushed up his sleeves farther than was really necessary in answer.

'These are permanent, Hermann,' Newt explained as if speaking to a child. 'I didn't get them to be disrespectful, or – what was it you used to call me, you know, when you still bothered to speak to me from time to time?'

'A kaiju groupie,' Hermann supplied readily, his lips halfway to a wry smile.

'Right,' Newt remembered. 'That was rude, by the way. Look, everyone thinks I have these tats because I loved them, worshiped them like some crazy cultist of the Breach. But they're war memorials, all right? On both sides. Names and dates.' He held out his arms for closer inspection, one eyebrow raised in challenge.

Hermann took Newton's left arm in his hand, feeling again that strange spark of contact and staring down hard at Yamarashi, rearing up from the depths. 'I don't see -'

'Right there,' Newton pointed out, the lettering so fine, the ink so closely matched, it would be easy to miss. _10-17-17, Los Angeles, Gipsy Danger._ He traced his index finger up to where half of Onibaba's body was visible and pointed out a similar line of lettering alongside the creature's giant left claw. _5/15/16, Tokyo, Coyote Tango._

There was barely a centimeter between them when Newton asked, a slight tease in his voice, 'You want a closer look at the full piece?' Hermann stood back up immediately, dropping his colleague's arm. He coughed dryly before replying in the negative. He felt a slight twinge of disappointment spike curiously in his chest like an echo, and just as quickly disappear. Newton couldn't very well complain about Hermann's response, after so deliberately provoking him. It was simply – uncouth.

'I didn't -' Hermann began, not entirely certain what he wanted to say. He settled on something simple. 'I didn't know you were leaving.'

'Yeah, well,' Newton answered, bending down on one knee to stroke Lucky Seven on her back. 'You would have, if you'd bothered to have a single conversation with me in the past, I don't know, three months?' Hermann muttered something unintelligible, and Newt kept going. 'Don't worry, dude, I'd never leave a gorgeous lab like this. It's a biochemist's wet dream. You won't even know I'm gone. I mean, it's not like it'll interfere with _your_ schedule - you can still ignore me every day in the mess hall, on the regular.'

'So,' Hermann fumbled, leaning more heavily on his cane than was strictly necessary. 'Not leaving the city for greener pastures, then?'

'Nah, I just can't keep living in a ten by ten metal crate. Especially not with her.' Newton lifted the tiny kaiju back into his arms, and she swiped sleepily across her face with one foreleg. He scratched behind her ears and she began emitting a strange, thrumming noise that made Hermann take a step back.

'Don't tell me that thing can purr,' he asked cautiously, and Newt grinned up at him.

'You know you like her,' he said with a certainty. 'You just won't let yourself admit it. C'mon, lean against the tank, you can hold her if you want,' Newt offered, getting back to his feet and carefully holding her out. Hermann's face shifted through a variety of expressions before he steadied himself with a deep breath, hooked his cane over the rim of the glass, and took the small creature in his arms. It was awkward, like an ungainly puppy, or a cat that knew precisely where it wanted to sit, and you weren't it. The kaiju made tiny squalling sounds for a few moments before settling in against Hermann's sweater, her head resting against his chest. She uncoiled her bright, lengthy tongue against the material for a moment before deciding she didn't like the taste of wool after all, spitting out a tiny ball of fuzz. She then proceeded to curl her tail around Hermann's arm and settle back in for a nap.

'You're smiling,' Newt commented, and Hermann realized that he was unfortunately correct. The creature was – warm, and soothing, in a strange way. Her skin was soft and dry, her mouth full of two rows of teeth that weren't even particularly sharp. He found himself thinking that surely, she couldn't cause much harm.

'You never answered my question,' Hermann spoke up in the peaceful silence that had descended around the three of them.

'Yeah, about that,' Newton answered, scratching the back of his head. 'I could probably use your help with getting her out of here unnoticed.' Hermann glared down at him over the tops of his spectacles without any real malice.

'Of course you could,' he said, and the kaiju in his arms shifted, lightly bumping his sternum with her head.

'I'm, ah, supposed to move in at the end of the week, actually,' Newt responded, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. 'I was going to pack her into a crate with a lot of the guinea pig shreds over there and poke some air holes at the corners, you know, so it would just look kind of worn around the edges? They're so big on recycling here, and all, and - I guess I was hoping no one would ask any questions?' He looked hopefully up at Hermann, one foot tapping out a rhythm only he could hear.

Hermann sighed. 'And you know they won't ask questions if the Co-Chairs of K-Science Division, Hong Kong City, are both involved in the transportation of said goods.'

Newt nodded enthusiastically. 'See? I knew you'd get it. And besides, there's some Köstritzer Schwarzbier in it for you if you help,' he added to sweeten the deal.

'How in the bloody -'

'The Russians, man. Just because they're busy working on Cherno Nova, they can _still_ get you anything. No fees, no import tax. I'll just owe 'em one, I can handle that.' Newt grinned and Hermann shook his head slowly so as not to wake the sleeping creature who had made herself quite at home on his chest. Trust Newton Geiszler to personally know the main source of contraband inside the Shatterdome.

'All right,' he agreed, already second-guessing his part in this plot. 'You get everything packed that needs to go, and I'll – I'll make sure things go off without a hitch. On one condition,' he added hastily.

'What's that?' Newt asked, understandably wary.

'That you find a better name for her before then,' Hermann said firmly. 'You can't keep calling her 'Number Seven,' it's – well, it feels vaguely offensive. Not to mention unimaginative.'

'Hermann Gottlieb, calling me out on a lack of imagination?' Newt laughed, leaning back with his thumbs thrust through his belt loops. 'Color me surprised. I think I'll have that carved in stone, actually.'

'Yes, yes,' Hermann muttered. 'Do as you please, you always manage to anyway. Find a better name, and I'll – help you move in.' He frowned, as if only now realizing just what he'd managed to get himself into.

'Great!' Newt exclaimed. 'It's this rooftop two-bedroom, so I've got an amazing view of the harbor and still have space for, you know, everything,' he gestured, and Hermann wished he didn't know how many boxes the man kept overflowing with notebooks and action figures and pilfered, if slightly outdated, equipment. 'It's 30 stories up, but it's got this little neglected garden outside, right? And I'm thinking, how awesome is that? I'll have it spruced up in no time, and anybody higher than me won't be able to tell if she's a cat or a dog or hell, some kind of robot. But I can't just take her for walks on the street, so – it's perfect, really.' Newton was practically bouncing on his feet with enthusiasm.

'Except that no one needs to walk a robotic pet,' Hermann answered idly, stroking the kaiju's tail.

'Actually,' Newt retorted. 'You do now. The new ones eat, shit, sleep - they do everything live pets do, which kind of defeats the purpose of getting a robot, if you ask me.'

'Which I don't believe anyone did,' Hermann answered. 'Still, it sounds like a good place for the both of you,' he commented, only aware of the slight doubts behind his words after they left his mouth. His own quarters near the lab seemed cold and unfamiliar, in comparison, which was idiotic and irrational and he'd lived there for two years already, why should there be a problem now?

Newt tilted his head slightly to one side. 'You _are_ going to miss me,' he said with some surprise.

'Don't be ridiculous,' Hermann sniffed. 'I still plan on ignoring you every day at lunch, remember?'

'Sounds kind of like a date,' Newt teased with a raised eyebrow and a wry grin.

'You are absurd,' Hermann answered with a sigh that might have been – but only just – slightly fond. He handed Lucky Number Seven back over to Newton with some reluctance and a few less fibers in his sweater, trailing along merrily behind her back claws. He gave her a final pat on the head that turned into several more moments of stroking along her spine and tail, not realizing just how far he'd pushed into Newton's personal space. Hermann was reasonably sure that Newt would insist he didn't really 'do' personal space, so he let the lingering consideration go.

'Hey,' Newt said softly, their fingers occasionally brushing across one another on Seven's back. 'Maybe we could do some catching up, over those beers. You think?'

'I'll have to run the numbers through a suitable predictive model and get back to you,' Hermann answered, meaning of course, and also _yes_.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to fill the 'Family' square on my Jaegercon Bingo card, and I'm not certain that it really ended up completing its mission, but there will also, just maybe, possibly be a sequel which definitely will.
> 
> The words happened primarily because Kjesta wrote [Mother](http://archiveofourown.org/works/908054), which is amazing and kind of broke me a little. So this is, in some way, my response.


End file.
